A modified 1984 Pontiac Fiero goes into space in F9: The Fast Saga. Universal Pictures

Head of Universal Regrets Sending FAST & FURIOUS Into Space

Originally posted on Nerdist | By Eric Diaz | Last updated Sep 8, 2025 9:31 PM ET

When any franchise runs long enough, it will hit a big wall of stupid. Not a single franchise is immune to this. Today we refer to this as “jumping the shark,” a reference to the moment on ’70s sitcom Happy Days when the Fonz jumped over a shark on waterskis. In 2021, the Fast and the Furious franchise gave us the modern equivalent. For the ninth movie, F9: The Fast Saga, they actually sent Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris into space. In a car. It was a moment so dumb, it broke the franchise for many. And via Variety, we’ve learned that head of Universal Pictures Donna Langley regrets that creative decision. Here’s what she told reporters at the Toronto Film Festival:

I’m sorry that we sent them into space. We can never get that genie back.

On the franchise overall, Langley later added, “We knew that we had to figure out how to grow it. We made a conscious decision to pivot to a sort of globe-trotting heist scenario.” Obviously, that was a smart move. When the franchise did that, and pivoted from simple car racing movies, its box office blew up across the globe. Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious each made over a billion globally, representing the peak of the franchise.

As the antics in the films starring Vin Diesel got wilder and wilder, fans online started to make jokes about the characters eventually going into space. Maybe Universal thought that’s where fans actually wanted things to go, instead of the opposite. But it’s a hard thing to walk back once you do it. The box office for each subsequent film in the series has been going down with the more recent installments. Although they still make a metric ton of money. Can the upcoming Fast XII get the franchise mojo back for one more race? We’ll have to wait and see. The eleventh film in the franchise is set to come out in 2026.

This article first appeared on Nerdist and was syndicated with permission.

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